The teachings of Don Juan

Anyone familiar with that?

 

no...no i'm not.

 

You missing out then.

 

i read half of it. but i stole my dad's copy from him so i'm going to finish it. hopefully in the next month.

 

Yes. Also enjoyed "The Power of Silence" by Carlos.

 

I think I have read or at least skimmed all of his work as well.

 

I read all of them starting with 'Journey to ixlatan' and ending with "the art of dreaming". Although some others came out after, the older ones you can read over and over, and they never seem repetitious. Even while I was travelling I would stop in bookstores ands read a few chapters of the old and whatever was new at the time

People think that books like "journey of the peaceful warrior" and "the celestince prophesy" compare to them, but it's like putting a candle to next to the sun, in my opinion.

 

I've read most of Castaneda's books - the single most interesting one is 'The Fire From Within' in my opinion. But I wonder about the whole thing - did Don Juan actually exist? Outside Castaneda's head, that is? Several others, Ken Eagle Feather, Merilyn Tunneshende to name two, claim to have met him, and their accounts are quite different. Myself, I think it is an example of great 'creative writing'.
But, Hari - I'm surprised you're interested in this, given your posts to other forums here. Whether or not Don Juan was a real person, there is certainly no place for God, or any kind of spirituality in Toltequity!

 

Castaneda came first, around 74 and later on after reading the gita I moved to more eastern things and began frequenting temples. One verse in the gita says that there is no difference between even analitical study of the universe and Bakti, for both lead to the same destination.
About Don Juan not being real, not a chance, but rumors are created due to people's skeptisims.

"Mescalito" as Don Juan called it, was a teacher, and he teaches how you can change your life. This was according to Don Juan, the God of mescaline, but that was his interpretation, he however did not ask for worship.

Another instance of a deity was when Carlos sees "the mold of man" and really surprised me because he was described as blue, and Carlos was so completely entranced by his beauty that he spontaneously created prayers of surrender when he saw him, exactly like Narada muni's first time and others when they realise krishna or see him.
Don Juan said that a man of knowledge can see the mold of man anytime they want.

God is not the God only of India, or the mediterranean, but he will be found anywhere people seek wisdom and liberation. He will come also according to the nature of the worship of the individuals, or even where they do not expect it.
Ignorance alone wants to put God in one place or in one method and not in another, while even more ignorant people want to debase the revelations given to those who have been chosen
to give the revelations to all.
There are different levels no doubt.

 

The thing is that I'm not going to go through CC's work to find the quotes that would show that Don Juan tells him very clearly that religion in all manifestations, is a knd of garbage tip, an ante-room to reality. The impeccable warrior has no time for such stuff. He knows that tales of immortality of the soul etc. are just that - tales. In reality, the awareness of ordinary men goes to feed the eagle - only the toltec can escape this fate. Because he doesn't die, but leaves this world in the body, as Don Juan and his party of sorcerers are said to do. CC himself appears to have left a body behind when he went. It is certainly not that there is any question of any survival of death for religious devotees etc. They are simply fooling themselves with minute shifts of the assemblage point. There 'god' is simply 'the human mould'. In 'The Fire From Within' I believe that CC tells how he became fascinated with this 'human mould' in a religious way, despite Don Juan's telling him it is all a waste of time for the seer.

There is much more in other places that must lead inevitably to the conclusion that this is not in any way compatible with any spiritual view of life.
As for the early books and the mescaline, datura and mushroom trips, Don Juan tells him later that it is not good, and he only did it because CC was very difficult to get to on one side of his awareness.
But I maintain that the thing is fiction anyway.

 

I will not argue that since I cannot be sure of anything. It is being certain itself that makes us foolish, because it makes us defend things we have no direct experience about. When I was reading CC it was exactly what I needed, an anti religious view of spirituality, a greater perspective of God than the one common in ordinary christianity.

Religions after it has been sterilised by the hypocrites what remains is a mockery, and one needs to have spiritual eyes open. There is center of wisdom within ourselves that many will never
awaken, not in one life; for that reason halucinogenics came into the picture.

Some would never overcome the barrier of the hate against the hipocritical religious indoctrination, if not for them.

No one needs a medicine for life if that medicine can heal one in a few takes, thus what you may see as a contradiction, may be only your limited vision.

To rely on ones' intelect and limited knowledge to unravel the boundless mysteries, and to put down other peoples' paths is the worst trip there is, and doomed from the start simply to delude, and never to liberate.

No matter how qualified a student may be, he must be first broken down and taken off the high-horse of arrogance even before being taught the first lesson; in that, all teachers
resemble one another.

"you must unlearn what you have learnt" was not said by Yoda first, "you cannot receive if your cup is full".

No two true teachers teach exactly the same way, but how they break down the barrier of self-assumptions in the learners, is entirely up to them, and not to us pigmies.

 

JOURNEY TO IXTLAN is my personal favorite of the lot. I don't care much about the hoopla surrounding the "authenticity" of what the books contain...the fact is that the books provide some pretty valuable insights, a bit like the Lobsang Rampa series set in Tibet......

 

Well said. I't's all about how truth rings a bell within us when we hear it if we have it, and it don't matter if it's Bugs Bunny, Einstein or Jesus
who speaks it.

That eliminates the charlatans and the 'schollary' that fool many people by charm, reputation or education; but nonetheless those fooled deserve it in a way, if you catch my drift.

I did enjoy the Lobsang Rampa "keeping the flame" and that was given to me by a hippy that ran a store in San francisco, in exchange for a strange medallion I was wearing.

The spirit works in mysterious, and not obvious ways.

 

But CC says clearly that God does not exist! He's not giving a wider perspective on God, but on something else entitrely - or so goes the claim! CC was a gifted writer, and no doubt, there's some kind of 'wisdom' in there, but not that much.
Also, because of the stuff about the eagle, which devours the awareness of the non-sorcerer at death, there is no hope for most of the people now living -

I didn't venture any opinion on psychedelic drugs, I simply stated that Don Juan tells CC at on stage that they are dangerous and can lead to imbalance etc. But even if that wasn't so, Don Juan makes it clear that only such substances 'from the gourd of a Brujo' can be effective.

That is not my own opinion.

 

SylvanLightning! Thank you for this wonderful link!! Bless all of you.



If you have any other amazing websites please PM. Love and Light

 

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kaliceum/

This is my journal and livejournal is 2 million strong.(the colorful pics ar at the bottom)

 

http://www.dhushara.com/book/genaro/genaro.htm#anchor1448406

"Aztec shamans had two notions of the soul which have been extensively 'revamped' by Carlos Castaneda. I will describe as the tonal the natural soul of the person - their birth nature - their organismic soul, which tries to make ordered sense of the world in which they find themselves. Complementing this, and yet quite separate, is a kind of power soul which comes not from their genetic nature, but from the collective unconscious and quantum-nonlocality. Some shamans would perceive it as a power animal, but really it is an unperceivable 'ally' - the nagual - the agent, not of order, but of chaotic transition."

'By cleaning the island of the tonal so that it is regrouped on the side of reason, the bubble of perception is polarized naturally into its tonal and nagual complement. By so freeing the tonal, it becomes capable of responding to the effects of the nagual so that the sorceror can enable the sentient bundle of awarenesses that has become linked in the incarnation of the individual to become loosened, not as completely as in death when the associations of the bundle separate again, but just sufficiently for the nagual to be witnessed by the tonal. The teacher and benefactor then work together to open the bubble, so that the totality of the self can be apprehended. 'There was no longer the sweet unity I call "me". I was a myriad of selves which were all "me", a colony of separate units that had a special allegiance to one another and would join unavoidably to form one single awareness, my human awareness. The unbending solidarity of my countless awarenesses, the allegiance that those parts had for one another was my life force... suddenly the "me" I knew and was familiar with erupted into the most spectacular view of all the imaginable combinations of beautiful scenes. Finally it was as if I were witnessing the organization of the world rolling past my eyes in an unbroken, endless chain.'

~*


When the bubble of perception breaks one finds the inner luminous fibers are connected with a universal cosmic loom. Bands of perception are still tonal in form. Awareness is the indivisible point beyond and holding together maya or the illusion of form. Consiousness is beyond the form of a single cultural expression. That which is not, at least, self aware returns to feed the eagles' new dream children.

I will raise the question "How is God different from Awareness?"

 

God is awareness I believe. Perhaps so aware that we would even comprehend it as unawareness/void, or itself. Nirvana. Infinite, and we are all this God.


That is very interesting about the Nagual word. This may be off but one of my power animal's is the wolf named Naga. I had a vision of my other wolf being/brother somwhere near on a mountain in mexico. An old man to be exact. This language cannot describe, but it was fractual interdimensional eagle that called me to the wolf, who showed me. It is beautiful.